


Contingency Plan

by icedteainthebag



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-10 05:21:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5572504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icedteainthebag/pseuds/icedteainthebag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder sinks deeper into depression and a renewed obsession that’s attached to Scully’s deepest pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based off of a couple of prompts I received from foxypp1. It went long. Special thanks to squad, especially scienceandmysticism for looking over the bare-bones first draft and to dashakay for all the clarity and support I still needed near the end.

Scully wakes at 1:08 a.m. to an empty bed, her hand gliding over the cool sheets where Mulder should be sleeping. It’s lately a more common occurrence. She knows where he is. Sometimes he loses himself in blogs and message boards: a few nights here, a few nights there. This week it had been every night and she only realized it when he slept until noon and didn’t wake at the smell of strong coffee brewing. Her work had been allowing her a convenient absence to ignore such details, but the ignorance had now built up to concern.

Sitting up, she slips into her worn Isotoner slippers and pads her way down the creaky stairs to his ground-floor office. The door is slightly ajar and casting a stream of dim, dusty light into the darkened living room. Pushing it open, she sees him in the position she assumes he will die in—hunched over an old Dell computer monitor, focused intently on chunks of text accentuated in bold, red, and black.

She shivers at the draft in the room, her loneliness and worry for him the only valid reasons to abandon her warm burrow.

“Come to bed,” she says, running her hand through the back of his hair upward. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Hmm.” He doesn’t move and she leans in to tease his ear with her lips.

“Does ‘hmm’ mean yes or ‘go resolve the situation yourself?’”

“No, no. I will.” He pushes the power button on the screen, giving it much-needed rest, and blinks hard several times as he gets up and stretches near his chair, his muscled abdomen peeking out from under his thermal shirt. She hears a few joints pop. The stubble on his face has reached pre-beard crisis level again. “I got this.”

“You sure, old man?” She laces her fingers with his and leads him up the stairs, a retreat blissfully devoid of any access to the world outside. “What were you reading?”

“I’ll tell you later.” He bumps up against her back and her breath catches when his hands slide around her waist and upward to cup her breasts through her tank top. His palms cover them, his thumb and forefinger quickly forming pointed peaks that ache under his touch.

“Apparently it was something evocative.” She feels him hardening against her lower back and pushes against him, her fingers clutching at the loose plaid pajama pants covering his thigh. It has been a while.

“Nah. I’ve just got a thing for you.” Her fist curls tighter around the fabric and she smiles, tilting her head back to look up at him. 

Their sex has become predictable, monthly instead of weekly, sometimes written on the calendar or sporadically performed on the sinking couch in the living room when the newspapers are cleared. She captures him when she can despite the feeling that she isn’t the only firefly in the jar lately. Mulder has eyes for no other woman and hasn’t for years. Instead, the seductive specter of the Internet floats around their heads, beckoning him into the comfort of its familiar embrace.

But this night, she’s lured him away and to keep him tantalized, she turns around and pulls her shirt over her head. “Touch me,” she says when he dips his mouth to hers, his breath on her lips. She feels the familiar pull of need deep in her abdomen.

The urgency of his kisses pushes her in tiny bumps backward to the bed. She strokes him with an open palm, firmly stating her intentions before she crawls up toward the head of the bed. In her underwear, she relaxes, her legs drifting apart as she watches him remove his clothes. The sight of him naked still makes the dopamine flow.

Mulder slips onto the bed and immediately snuggles up to her, his broad shoulders positioning under her thighs. She hasn't shaved; he won't notice. He nuzzles the damp fabric between her legs, nibbling and teasing. She moans and he responds in an echo, one of his fingers hooking the waistband of her underwear. Tugging on his hair, she captures his gaze.

“Already?” he asks.

She bites her lip and nods. “Just get the lube and fuck me like crazy.”

He laughs and slides out of position, reaching for the bedside table drawer. “I thought you called me an old man.”

“Prove me wrong.” She plays with a nipple and watches him.

Mulder scoots her underwear down her legs and pops the lube bottle cap open. He catches some on two fingers and runs them down her warm flesh, making her shiver. Gliding back up, he drips a bit more fluid onto his fingers and slowly slips one inside of her. She lets out a sound of muted victory as he gently works his way in, swirling and dipping. His second tender finger triggers her hips’ movement. Warm. Deep. Full. She grips the pillow with one hand and luxuriates in the mounting waves of pleasure, his thumb teasing her clit.

“Am I working you up?” He kisses her inner knee. His fingers draw out, slide deeply back in. She sounds wet, so wet.

Scully moans, her eyes closed, impatient. “More.”

When he enters her it feels so bittersweet; at times this was the only reason for existing, a sacred moment when the world belongs to the two of them. Her breath matches his as he strokes her from the inside, his muscular arms tensing underneath her fingernails. He fucks her not at the frenzied pace of youth, back when they started it all, but still at an impressive clip that denies his age, effortless and steady. She still loves looking into his eyes when they’re connected. She can almost slip inside that war-torn mind of his.

Minutes pass and she twists her body, twists their hips apart and lands on her belly on the mussed sheets. He barely misses a beat as she slides up on her knees and his arm is around her waist, his cock inside her again with force that makes them both grunt. Then he doesn’t stop. He loves it—she knows he does—and the primal sounds escaping her are a combination of entertaining him and the release of questions and worry that are stuck in her head.

His breathing becomes ragged as he starts to come, the familiar growl that makes her muscles contract around him. Her name slips off his tongue as he loses himself in her in a familiar rhythm. 

They collapse next to each other in the center of the bed. His toned chest in the moonlight sheens with sweat. He opens one eye. “I owe you one.”

“I’ll add it to the tally.” She’s still on her stomach and he smooths his hand down her spine and over her hip. “You’ve been up so late the past few days. What’s going on?”

“Reading some stuff.” He cups her ass, squeezing it.

She nestles her head into the pillow, watching his erection wane. “As long as you weren’t flirting with any mysterious canine behaviorists.”

He chuckles. “Those days are long gone.”

She reaches over and grazes his stubbled cheek with the back of her hand. “I worry about you.”

“For good reason,” he replies.

“I’m serious.” He kisses her thumb when it swipes his lower lip. “Up odd hours, hardly sleeping, and when you do sleep, it sounds like you’re having nightmares.”

He rolls onto his side facing her. “There’s been a lot on my mind lately.”

“Like?”

His expression turns to discomfort for a few seconds, hesitancy, and then it passes. “I don’t know if you want to know.”

“Tell me.” She is used to painful truths.

His sigh is deep. “Something popped up on one of the blogs I follow a few weeks ago… something I hadn’t heard about in a long time. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time.”

She raises her eyebrows for him to continue, her gut begging her otherwise.

“It mentioned the incident at Ruskin Dam. The massacre, the abduction. I was surprised to see it.”

Scully swallows the lump in her throat at the instant flashback to that harrowing time—the fear, the pain of losing Cassandra, the infinite curiosity about what happened that night. It was one of many disconcerting mysteries she had neatly packaged up inside. “What did it say?”

“That it was a coordinated military action to cull the herd of past human experimentation subjects gone wrong.”

“That’s not particularly revelatory.” Her body prickles at a draft and she tugs the sheet and quilt up around her, over his waist.

“It connected the incident to an increase in unsolved child abductions over the past few years.”

Her breath is deep, automatic. This is the part where she tries to bring him back to Earth. A predictable script by now. “Most children are abducted by family or acquaintances, not conspiratorial military forces.”

“Great pillow talk, huh?” He closes his eyes and she caresses his arm, feeling goosebumps rise.

“It’s fine. We’ve had worse.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. He moves his hand to her collarbone and lightly traces the ridge. “A significant detail in the entries hit me. It mentioned that several of the abducted children had one connection—there was a mention of Dr. James Parenti in their medical records.”

Her tears of shock are immediate and unexpected, as is the lurch in her stomach. “Jesus, Mulder. That was out of left field.”

“He’s also noted in many of the medical records of Ruskin Dam victims and survivors.”

She stares at him, her body still. “You’re worried about William.”

Mulder slowly tongues his upper lip, wild thoughts most likely running through his mind. “We think we know where he came from, but there’s no denying that Dr. Parenti was involved somehow.”

“A miracle, or artful deception.”

He shakes his head lightly. “It still hurts when you describe it that way.”

She shrugs one shoulder, though she feels a pang of shame for her callousness. “It’s how I put it in its place. It’s where I keep it so it doesn’t hurt as much.”

“I know how that feels.” He snuggles closer to press his forehead against hers. “The pain always comes around.”

She nods. “I know it does.”

“Scully, I’m sorry. This was probably the worst time to bring this up. I’ve just—”

“No,” she replies. “I asked. Thank you for being honest. I just need some time to process.”

“Understood.” His nose brushes against hers and she kisses him the best she can, ignoring the twisting panic rising inside of her.

“I’m gonna sleep on it.” She kisses him once more, a quick peck. “Love.”

“Love. ‘Night.”

With that he turns away from her and she lies in the bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for his breathing to deepen with sleep. It takes a long time.

-

The air is cool and heavy as the early morning mist rolls in from the hollow, and with it a dampness that settles deep into her bones. Her post-sex body aches, but it’s a spent ache that matches her mood.

This is the sort of morning that their front porch was made for—slippers, steaming tea, and lounging. When she and Mulder decided to crash-land in rural Virginia she hadn’t realized how quickly she would become accustomed to country living. It isn’t as quaint as she’d assumed it would be, and much harder work than her cozy apartment with a HOA. But the manual labor their homestead demands of them, like fixing fencing and controlling the brambles, occupies her mind and body in a comforting way.

She’d expected a silence out in the middle of nowhere that she’d never experienced except on vacations—or work trips—to exotic locales, but the more time they spend ensconced on their tiny parcel of land, the more she hears the sounds around them.

The world is never quiet. Only your surroundings change.

Mulder’s bombshell about William the previous night brought sleeplessness along with it. Their boy who was conceived of heartbreak, broken dreams, and on her best days, what she regarded as miraculous divinity, is rarely a topic of conversation between them. Talking about him means talking about where he came from and what he signifies.

She vividly remembers that because William was left behind in the cult’s fiery aftermath, she at first thought he was ‘normal’ and everything would be ‘okay.’ An alluring, although brief, calm set in, before she’d realized that ‘normal’ and ‘okay’ had entirely stopped applying to her life.

William’s protective placement was the singular most painful moment in her life, because in him she’d placed all the love she had left for Emily and even more so, the love she had for the man who had helped create the perfect bundle settling in her arms, and all the hope for the future. When William was gone, that part of her was gone. It wasn’t Mulder’s fault, but it lessened her capacity to feel anything, and that lessening had endured for far too long. Giving him up made her feel weak. Weak is not a feeling she accepts easily.

It is still an emptiness, a struggle. As part of her ongoing therapy she’s allowed herself to create a fantasy world around William, envisioning a brown-haired, intellectually tumultuous teen sitting right at the 75th percentile on the growth curve, a perfect combination of his parents.

She doesn’t want to believe the voice in her head that’s begging her to realize what Mulder’s renewed interest in their son means, or listen to her logical mind quantify how much of his pursuit might be selfish.

When William was adopted she had set up a contingency plan, an emergency option; the adoption had not been completely blind. She couldn’t let it be for a few reasons: knowing the value some people placed on their son and the danger that presented, wondering if Mulder would return and demand him back. So far, the phone number to access the information was in their fire-safe box with their advance directives, wills, and her mother’s wedding jewelry. 

Soon he’ll ask you to make a choice. It might not be fair, and there may be no right answer, she thinks.

This morning anxiety is quickly brewing like a storm whipping up through the trees, shifting in the wind, teasing the leaves with its presence. 

She hears the front door swing open. We are not alone, she muses. Mulder walks up behind her as she observes the treeline of their property floating in an opaque sea of fog. Strong arms slide around her waist and his chin rests atop her head. She breathes in his morning scent of coffee and body. Light rain begins to tap against the roof.

“Morning.”

“It is,” she says. “Were we supposed to get rain?”

“Not sure. My phone’s inside.”

How unusual. The smell of wet dust rises from the ground. 

“Sometimes I realize how lucky I am to be able to hold you like this,” he says against her hair.

“It feels good.”

“Still?”

She rubs his hand. “Still.”

“You didn’t sleep much,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad you slept a bit.” She pulls away from his embrace and feels a nervous twinge. “You know why I couldn’t.”

They stand near each other, not touching, as the rain picks up. “Sometimes these thoughts whirl around in my mind and I can’t get them out.” His toes twiddle in their thick socks. “Sometimes I think I’m crazy.”

“‘Crazy’ is not a diagnosis in the DSM-5 and I won’t let you apply a useless term to yourself.” Her smile must reflect the weary sadness she feels because he restlessly shifts like he’s made a false confession. “You may be a few things, but I refuse to call you crazy.”

His hand goes through his hair and he clutches the back of his neck, looking upward at her. “What would you call me?”

“Depressed. Anxious. I think you still struggle with PTSD. You numb yourself by getting sucked into these blogs, these fanatical worlds of conspiracy. It’s easier than dealing with what’s inside you.”

“Dr. Scully,” he says with a halfhearted sigh.

“Damn right I am.” She touches the edge of his worn robe. “And I’m serious about this.”

“It’s just a funk.” He’d never make a good lawyer with this kind of conviction.

“Well, this funk has brought you to a very disconcerting point of view of our son.”

He shifts again on his feet. “Maybe… maybe the evidence speaks for itself.”

“The evidence,” she says. “Have you seen these medical records? Have you been to a lab? Connected the dots of abduction yourself? You’re not usually the kind to let someone do the investigating for you.”

“It does seem convenient,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth acting on.”

“It’s been thirteen years since we’ve seen our baby—our son—and now you want to see him. And maybe get him back. Somehow.”

“Yeah.”

“Because…”

“Because.”

“I want to hear you say it, Mulder.” Her arms cross in front of her, protective of her heart.

“Because, because.” He pauses. “Because I want to protect him.”

“And.”

His head moves to the left, a swipe of indignance mixed with acceptance. “I think he may provide the answer to what Dr. Parenti was truly involved in. And what happened at the dam. Or at least, the way to an answer.”

She stares at the slickened grass just off their porch. “Thank you, again, for being honest. Especially because you know it’s painful to me.”

“I had to tell you.” His sadness is palpable, tinged with regret.

“I know you want to protect him, but have you thought about what this might do to him? Both of us showing up out of the blue… to a teenager, that could be devastating. Not to mention how his parents would feel.”

She sees Mulder roll his shoulders in her peripheral vision. ‘Parents’ hit a nerve. “I wouldn’t even suggest this if I hadn’t already thought that through. And I know how scary, and how risky, the prospect is.”

Does he know? She likes to imagine he does, when she’s feeling especially vengeful and the pang of absence is too much. She likes to imagine that Mulder wakes at night, breasts aching after dreaming of William’s hungry cry. Or that sometimes he’s knocked breathless by the image of their wary son entering adolescence, discovering who he thinks he is. Sometimes she equates William to Samantha—Mulder’s heart was ripped away, her heart was ripped away too. There are pieces of them that they will never get back; they will never be whole. 

“Scully, I’ve never pressed for this before. I’ve always known it was safer to keep him far away. But I also know that having that closure is important to you.”

“Don’t make this about me. It’s always been important to me.” She brushes a tear from her eye. “But it’s more important to keep him safe.”

“Let me tell you something, Scully. He’s never going to be safe because they’ll always find him. We have to get to him first.”

“They.” She practically spits out the word. The ominous threat of ‘they’ that has tormented Mulder’s life for so long, that has dragged her into the darkness with him. She remembers Spender telling her in the middle of her heart breaking that even though William had lost the powers that made him valuable to some, the conspirators would always pursue him. “Why the sudden revelation?”

“Things are mounting.”

“Things. Like these things you’re reading in these blogs? The rantings of paranoid, delusional lunatics that think the world is at its end?”

“Tread lightly,” he said, his voice colder. “You may be living with one of those lunatics.”

“Fuck.” She grits her teeth and turns her back on him. The rain begins beating on the shingles like a snare drum, causing her to raise her voice. “I don’t know how or why you find these rabbit holes to go down. Can’t you be happy with what we have? Can you ever just be happy?”

“Sometimes I’m happy. Last night I was happy for a while.” His restraint is being tested; she can hear it in his voice. “I can’t be happy knowing he’s out there and in danger without us to keep him safe.”

She begins to cry, staring out at an old oak tree, her fists tight at her sides. “I didn’t trust myself to be able to do that before, Mulder, so what’s changed?”

The silence lingers. “I’m more afraid now. And fear makes you act.”

Fear was a cheap emotion she shed long ago. At least, she likes to pretend she did, calming herself with rationality when fear crept up on her. “He needs to be more than a pawn to you. He won’t be a piece of your game. I won’t allow it.”

“Scully. For fuck’s sake.”

“I want to see him. I’ve wanted to see him every day since I passed him off to strangers. Strangers who I’m sure have loved him the way I always wished for.” She turns to him and approaches him, her resolve faltering, as it does far too often. “That doesn't mean I’m willing to drag him into this.”

“Protecting him doesn’t mean dragging him in.” A tear slips from his eye and her throat closes up, thick and restrained. “I love him too, and I would do anything to see him again.” 

Her forehead nudges his sternum. She turns her ear to his chest to hear his heart beating. “This is going to hurt. Fox, you don’t need more hurt, and neither do I. And what if it hurts him? Do you want to risk that?”

“I’m sorry.” His lips move against the top of her head. “For everything.”

It has been a while since she’d thrown herself upon a sword for him, every time swearing it would be the last. 

He holds her for a long time, enveloped by the sound of the rain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder sinks deeper into depression and a renewed obsession that’s attached to Scully’s deepest pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is now three parts. This part is unbetaed; I was on a roll and wanted to get it out. Thanks to @scienceandmysticism, @avocadoave, @dashakay and my other supportive friends for seeing me through this. And thanks to everyone who reblogged/sent me notes on the first part. It’s truly lovely to see such a response.

A fair-haired six-year-old boy swings on a dilapidated playset. Full sun, the smell of cut grass, the sound of insects whirring in the distance. He hums a familiar tune.

_Somewhere… beyond the sea… somewhere, waiting for me..._

The chains of the swing creak, needing oiled. He’s just learned how to pump his legs to get himself going and he’s yelling at the top of his lungs,

“Look at me! Look at me, Mom!”

She can’t stop looking at him; the world is him and the space between them and nothing else. He swings higher. She opens her mouth to warn him but she’s mute.

He jumps off the swing, limbs flailing as he flies. He lands on all fours, hunched over, and looks back at her, a smile curling upward and his lovely blue eyes turned blood red. The sound he makes—oh, God, it’s not human, it’s not human at all.

And she feels fear as he walks on all fours into the long green-gray grass of the field beyond. She can’t move as he dissolves, this bizarre vision, becoming one with a dust devil whipping up in the distance.

-

Her body twitches in a hypnic jerk, eyes snapping open in the pitch black of their bedroom. She matches her breathing with the ticking of the clock on the bedside table. In—one, two, three. Out—one, two, three. She turns her head to the side to see the silhouette of Mulder’s broad back and feels as alone as if he wasn’t there.

-

Her memories of William are faded like old film, the kind of memories that seem like they belong to a different person. She’s a believer in distinct phases of life and the last time she held him was the ending of the Light Phase and the beginning of the Dark Phase, and that has lasted several lengthy, tiring years. 

The Light Phase was short and splendid, peppered with Mulder’s butterfly kisses along her neck and wrapped up in soft baby blankets and the smell of Dreft (the only laundry soap Maggie would allow her to use on the baby’s sensitive skin) that overpowered the simple smell of the newborn in her arms. Everything seemed simple for a few precious moments. Until, predictably, it was not.

The light was slashed by intense moments of pain that grounded her, deep stabbing wounds that eventually bled her out and she had to ask someone to take William away from it out of fear that he would be the next victim.

Exhaustion has taken its toll as of late. Between her career instability and Mulder’s psychological instability everything seems askew. She’s lost weight and the recommendations of her own physician to “work on that” haven't made a lick of difference. There’s a weariness ground into her now, under the heel of life’s ever-present pressure. There isn’t any energy to deal with all of it at once. Instead, she’s dealt with none of it. The bliss of oblivion is wearing thin, but she clings to it because it is what she has left.

She made Mulder call the adoption agency. She let him explain the unspecified and mostly unsubstantiated threats to William’s life. He name-dropped the FBI and she rolled her eyes, placing her head on her folded arms at the kitchen table. The faucet dripped, unrepaired. He hadn’t been concerned about fixing things right in front of him for a long time.

The hospital administration doesn’t seem to mind that she’s taking leave. Admittedly, it’s been a long time since she’s made any significant contribution in a medical or scholarly sense. She falters at explaining her reason for the leave before she checks “vacation.” It’s the option with the least attachments.

-

Within a week they are tucked into a plane, two cramped coach seats with Mulder’s legs packed tightly into his space and hers. She is introducing yet another complication into her life, which is exactly what she doesn't need. Perhaps it will bring clarity or resolution to the fug of hurt that her son had become upon her mind. 

Mulder holds her hand a little; she beats him at Scrabble on the iPad. She stares out the window over vast plains of nothingness, spotted over by a few clouds, while he casually laments the prohibitive price of wifi and informs her for the twenty-fifth flight in a row never to order water from the service cart unless it comes from a bottle.

“It’s contaminated,” he says. “But then again, bottled water is a scourge.”

She looks out the window.

-

Reagan International to Cheyenne has two layovers. It reminds her of how they stone-skipped across the country in their earlier days but her body is far less tolerant now of altitude changes and the din of overcrowded cabins. In Denver, Mulder is dismayed at the lack of Chili’s restaurant in the terminal. They settle (he settles) for a mexican grille that offers vegan food for her and baby-sized burrito for him. 

They eat in silence. He swipes through his news updates and she drinks a beer with her vegan street tacos. Because why the hell not.

-

“So many roads and they all seem the same.” 

The sunset blooms red across the stunningly flat horizon of rural Wyoming. He drum-taps the steering wheel in the nervous way he does sometimes. He’s been sucking on the same sunflower seed for at least five minutes.

“Remember when you thought this was a normal life?” Scully’s hand twitches, muscle memory and the desire to reach across to his seat recalling a lingering sorrow.

“It’s more normal than the one I’m living now.”

She nods in time with the rotten shocks of their rental vehicle. “What’s missing for you?”

“Movement. Purpose.”

Maybe this is his way of finding that purpose, in fact, she’s sure it is. Mulder is always searching for the missing pieces but he’ll never be complete. That even she can’t quell his deep sense of unrest is a harsh reality to face.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to give that to you.”

His drumming stops. “You’ve given me more than enough.”

They pull into the parking lot of the Comfort Inn. No bureau travel budget means they can spoil themselves with the luxury of an inside corridor like other weary travelers whom she used to envy.

A part of her longs for a squeaky bed surrounded by paper-thin walls that they pretended muffled their cries of pleasure.

-

Sitting at the wobbly table while Mulder goes out to get ice for the room, she pulls out William’s picture, the only one she has left. She keeps it in her wallet and rarely looks at it in order to keep it pristine. In the picture he’s having tummy time on a blanket, getting ready to roll over with gentle rocks back and forth. She still remembers the feather-soft feel of his hair under her fingers. She’s kept this photo to herself because as his mother, it belongs to her.

She wants to will this boy to remember her tomorrow, adding it to the list of impossibilities that got them to this room in the first place. Her fear of rejection is palpable, the question pulsing through her like blood. _What if he doesn’t want to know where he came from?_

Then, _what if he wants to know where he came from?_

Their gift to him had been peace of mind.

Mulder comes back not only with ice, but with a small bottle of Maker’s from the convenience store next door. He grabs the wrapped plastic cups from beside the sink and wordlessly prepares their drinks. She puts the photo in the center of the table and when Mulder joins her, his eyes linger on it as he sinks into the chair.

He pushes her cup of bourbon toward her, careful not to spill. “To William.”

They only ever toast their son on his birthday, and she isn’t sure this is the rebirth Mulder is looking for.

She lifts her drink, then lifts it a bit higher when she can’t speak his name. Mulder’s eyes glaze over, causing hers to as well.

Her throat burns warmly, radiant, like love.

-  
 _  
The possibility of meeting was an agreement that was made years ago under the circumstances that The Family was compassionate and empathetic and was so incredibly thankful that they had been given this gift that they were, of course, willing to accommodate within reason. They have a vested interest in William’s safety, and if federal agents, or those formerly of the calling, had an urgent need to entertain him face-to-face, it must be serious. They have been honest with William for a number of years, ever since it became obvious to both the child and the Van De Kamps he was not born of them. There are things beyond his looks and his inquisitive nature that tip them off to stranger origins; quirks that they are able to overlook if they try hard enough, and wishing to be good parents, they do. But they love him and he in turn loves them. That is all they ever wanted._

There are hard-boiled eggs at the hotel’s continental breakfast, and one of those industrial waffle makers that sleepy-eyed people in their pajamas line up to use. Breakfast well stocked and dining area well kept, the Yelp review could read. 

She takes an egg and an English muffin but by the time she sits down, her nerves have called it all off. She scopes out the families clambering for food, the bickering old couples traveling together. It’s a clusterfuck. 

Mulder is finally making his waffle. 

She pushes the egg around on her plate with a plastic spork. _Egg. Eggs._

“Just like Waffle House,” Mulder says, a drive-by note as he drops his plate and beelines for the orange juice. When he comes back, words bubbling inside her since the night before start to make their way out. 

“You seem… cheerful.”

“You’ve never described me as ‘cheerful,’ Scully. I’m trying not to be insulted.”

“So, this is it.” She wants to run away from the only thing she’s ever wanted.

Mulder reaches across the table and covers her chilled hand with his warm palm. “This is it. Scully, are you ready?”

“I…” His hand feels so good. “I’m not. But I’m worried about William. We could really damage his life with all of this information.”

“It’s for his own good, Dana,” he answers, thumb consoling the side of her hand.

“We have to be careful,” she says, a sick knot in her stomach. She looks at him, intent, desperate for him to take her seriously. “We have to be really careful.”

This should be one of the happiest days of her life—one she dreamed about for years—but it doesn’t feel right. Nothing about it feels right.

“I promise we’ll be careful. Look at me.” Her upper lip quivers in response. “We will be careful.”

She turns her hand in his, squeezing it until it hurts. “I trust you.”

His grip is strong. 

_God, give me his strength._

-

“So are you going to ask them, ‘So, lately, have you noticed any objects mysteriously spinning in the air, or your child telekinetically shooting things across the room?’”

Mulder smiles, turning the car down a pothole-ridden road, one block closer to the park. “I wish I could have seen it.”

“No, you don’t.” Scully looks down at her hands folded in her lap. “It was scary as hell.”

Siri tells them to turn right in 300 feet.

-

 

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning and the park is busy, which was probably the prime reason the Van De Kamps picked it as their meeting spot. It’s set on the edge of an expansive grassland on the east end of town, unfenced, with an unkempt playground and jungle gym teeming with children.

She’s avoided places like this in the past years. 

They pull into a parking space and she is already scanning the crowd, her heart in her throat. “You ready?” Mulder asks. He puts his hand on the side of her cheek and she falls into it a bit, lips firmly pressed together. 

She nods, blinking, still looking.

And then she sees a ginger-haired boy standing at the side of the playground, and he has to be as tall as her, but that’s impossible, isn’t it? It can’t be him. Until he turns around.

She sees his father’s nose and eyebrows and her own blue eyes… she knows those eyes. She’s looked into them before.

Hands clasped so tightly her knuckles are white, she pulls them free of each other. She sits back in her seat.

“That’s him,” she breathes. This is her truth, her response to seeing something so foreign that it can’t possibly be real.

Mulder nods, finally quiet, his expression soft, captivated.

Scully is frozen. “I have to get out. I don’t want to get out.”

“You’ve needed out for a long time,” Mulder says. He clears his throat and strokes her face, then pulls away. “Go.”

She pops the door open, her senses on overload. Never has she seen sunlight so bright, a sky so blue, or felt the draw to another human being so intensely as this moment.

She hears Mulder get out of the car and their appearance has now drawn some attention. The Van De Kamps say something to William, who focuses on the strangers approaching him. Mulder’s hand on her lower back startles her out of her reverie.

The technical difficulties of explaining to a young teen boy why he has to come with them to be safe when he’s been safe all of his life seem daunting at best. There is no primer for decades-old government conspiracies with or without extraterrestrial involvement. Scully has been convinced that attempting to explain this to anyone, especially him, will just pass them off as a couple of troubled and battered middle-agers with regrets.

_We have to be careful._

William smiles, a mere uptick of one side of his mouth, and it’s all she needs to get moving.

“Hey, there,” the man—Peter—calls as they walk over to meet them in the grassy field between parking lot and playplace. “Mr. Mulder, Ms. … I’m sorry, doctor… Scully.”

“Hi,” Scully says as William straightens his shoulders in front of her, his full lips parted slightly like he’s gazing at exotic animals in the zoo. A few tears spill down her cheek and she wipes them quickly away. “Sorry. Hi, Peter and Beth. I’m Dana.”

She extends her shaking hand, which Peter takes firmly. “Dana… it’s a pleasure.”

Beth puts her hand on Scully’s shoulder. “Nice to meet you. And Fox,” she adds as the men shake hands.

“Mulder,” he quickly corrects.

“All righty then.” Beth puts her other arm around William’s shoulder and gently pulls him closer. “William, this is what we talked about. These are your birth parents, Dana and… Mulder.”

They kept his name.

William’s eyes survey them in what Scully considers a contemplative analysis of the two characters before him. “Hey.”

HIs voice, on the cusp of puberty, is lower pitched than she’s imagined. 

Mulder reaches out to him, hand extended. “William, it’s good to see you.”

William quickly reciprocates, their palms similarly sized. “Sir.”

She wonders how long this young boy has practiced this moment in the mirror.

Beth and Peter sit a table away at the park just close enough to ensure they can step in if these two mysterious newcomers seem like total whackos, which Scully is sure they do. Their patience and compassion are unheard of in this world and she is calmed by it.

The three of them settle awkwardly at their picnic table, unwittingly positioned in an interrogation setting—adults together, him across. All they needed was a spotlight.

“Thank you for coming today,” Scully says. “It means so much to me to see you.”

William relaxes slightly. “Me too. Mom and Dad have always told me about you. Stories. I don’t know if they’re real or not.”

Mulder smirks, proudly squaring his shoulders. “They might be.”

The boy’s fingers trace the weave pattern on the picnic table top. “But they never told me until last week that you might come back.”

This tender, beautiful creature with his straight hair shining like the sun and his tanned skin; he spends time outside like any healthy young man. Playing with animals, exploring the timber, helping around the farm. She quickly fabricates this new William around every detail she’s observing. 

“It wasn’t something we considered doing until recently.” Scully felt a pang of regret. “Not because we didn’t want to see you. We wanted you to be safe.”

“When… we… gave you up, as baby, we told your adoptive parents that there were some dangerous men who threatened your life,” Mulder says. “That it was best to remain hidden.”

William stares at his father with a mixture of curiosity and wariness.

Scully looks through the table top down at William’s left shoe, the toe of it drawing nonsensical patterns in the dirt under his feet. “Sounds weird.”

“It is.” Mulder shifts on the bench. “Weird and unsettling. Which is why we’re here.”

Scully tentatively leans into the table. “We’re here to protect you.”

“What is it about me?” There’s a slight urgency in his voice.

She and Mulder quickly side-eye each other, which William notices. “Yeah. You know.”

“What do you mean?” She cuts herself off before she uses a term of endearment. 

“You say I’m different. I know I’m different. I can feel it. And they,” he nods his head in Beth and Peter’s direction, “can see it.”

“What do you feel, William?” Mulder asks.

He shrugs one shoulder. “Just stuff. I don’t know. Different stuff.”

Mulder nods and Scully sees a familiar spark in his eye. A desire, an ache, to push forward. She puts her hand on his knee. “There’s a lot we need to tell you, but it’s going to take some time,” she says. “Some of it might be confusing.”

“O- _kay_.” William chews on the inside of his lip. “So I’m different. And people… want me, so I’ve been hiding. Why should I come out now?”

“Things have changed,” Mulder says. “You might be valuable to them, but you’re more valuable to us.”

“Like one of our 4H heifers.”

A laugh escapes her suddenly, a punctuation mark of stress relief and nerves. “No. Not quite.”

“But you’re quite the prize,” Mulder says.

“How.” William’s expression is serious now. “Why.”

Scully sits back and closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. Mulder was right. He does pass genetic muster, especially inquiry.

“There was a doctor who was involved in your birth.”

Scully’s stomach drops, her eyes fluttering open. “Mulder, no.”

William’s face changes quizzically. “Isn’t that usually what happens?”

“Actually, that’s not what happened when you were born,” Scully begins.

Mulder leans on the table with his forearms. “This doctor was your mother’s fertility doctor. She had tried unsuccessfully to get pregnant. But this doctor was an evil man, working with other evil men to hurt people.”

“Stop,” Scully whispers, managing a meager smile to her son while indescribably rattled.

Mulder continues. “You might be a part of a project, with other children, that involves alien technology.”

_Stop._

This young man’s eyebrow arches and his gaze flickers to the Van De Kamps and back to his real parents. They seem to notice and Peter begins to get up, a puzzled look on his face.

_Stop._

“Okay, I… I don’t really know who you are…” 

“It’s okay,” Scully quickly responds. “This is too much right now.”

“What is he talking about?” William’s eyes pierce hers and she feels a lightning bolt of panic. She shakes her head once, unable to respond, throat so tight it hurts. 

Mulder reaches for him. William doesn’t return the gesture. “When you were a baby, you had special—”

“Mulder, stop!”

He’s got that wild-eyed look she knows too well, and there’s no turning back. He’s gone to the great beyond and is dragging them both with him.

“Special _parents_?” William’s eyes fill with tears. “Yeah, seems like it.”

“This is not how this was supposed to go. William…” Her face feels flushed as she speaks his name. How long has it been? “We think the best thing for you to do is come with us for a while.”

“Are you kidding?”

Her heart felt a pain like no other. “No.”

“Listen… I don’t know you from anyone. I mean, thanks for wanting me to be safe. But my parents are fine. I’m safe with them and I don’t… I don’t know you.”

“No,” Mulder says, “but you can trust us.”

“Is everything okay?” Peter asks, Beth following him. She walks up behind William, who stands up and immediately gives her a hug.

Oh, God.

“We were explaining some things to him.” Mulder, as if he finally has some recognizance, has an air of shame about him. 

“It doesn’t seem to be going very well,” Beth says, her voice colder. “Upsetting him wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Well, there are some very complicated—”

“I’m sorry,” Scully has no qualms about interrupting Mulder this time. “I’m sorry we upset you.”

William pulls out of Beth’s arms and gives Scully a look of empathy. Pity maybe. Scully lets out a small sob she’s been stifling for minutes, hours. Maybe years. She covers her mouth.

“I need to go,” William whispers. “Sorry… sorry, Mom.”

He leaves the table with his family and she’s already gone, floating somewhere beyond the pain. But she watches him walk away, unsure if it is the last glimpse she will have of her son. 

_Bye, bye, sailing._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder sinks deeper into depression and a renewed obsession that’s attached to Scully’s deepest pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final part. Thanks to @leiascully and @contradiction-to-nature and the rest of squad for constant encouragement. Thanks to all of you for reading!

_"You know— one loves the sunset, when one is so sad..."_  
"Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"  
But the little prince made no reply. 

\- The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

-

 

His son, being led away by the only family he’s ever known… his fair hair shines in the sun.

Mulder feels swallowed up whole and he doesn’t object. He offers himself up to be devoured by the depth of his ache and longing for this perfect boy and the searing pain of hearing William’s mother stifling her cries behind him. 

He approaches her and lightly brushes her shoulder with his fingers. _What is this, an attempt at an offering?_ He questions himself, doubts himself. Scully pulls away and stands up, her back to him, and walks to the car.

He follows in her path, trails her like the beaten dog he is.

He knows why he told him. He began to panic about being a young boy of the same age wondering what was going on and having no explanation, no truth. He didn’t regret giving William the honesty that he wished he would have gotten, but it was probably the worst timing he ever could have conceived. 

He slides into the seat next to her, shutting his door, settling into his place. She stares straight ahead like she’s forgotten where she is. 

“I'll fix it,” he says softly.

“How are you going to fix it?” She instantly reanimates, somewhere between a scream and weeping. “How, Mulder?”

“I’ll call them and explain.”

“There… there is no explaining it.” She lets out a sob. “There’s no explaining _us_. We’re fucked. We’re—”

“I’m sorry!” He slams his hands against the steering wheel with a primal groan, drawn out like a bow on a string. He feels tears forming, finally, finally he can feel something but it’s a wretched, nauseating feeling. “I’m sorry.”

There’s no hope in it.

And she’s full-on crying, rocking and hugging her frail frame, her head tilted upward, emitting a low moan like a mother who has truly lost her baby.

“I want out,” she cries. “No, please, no. No.”

Her broken heart breaks his, right down the scars of the past. He knows she has broken like this before but he’s never been around to see it.

-

He knew when he became a free man that he’d slipped out of one prison and into another. 

At least he was able to shed his orange jumpsuit.

There were glory days of budding freedom where they seemed like every other middle-aged couple that had come into their own, forgetting the baggage of the past. The house, the greenery everywhere, the smiles on their faces when he pulled out the key and unlocked the creaky front door. He’d carried her over the threshold, laughing at her laughter.

She easily snagged a job at Our Lady of Sorrows, the hospital impressed and excited to have her on staff. They fell into a comfortable routine of sharing household chores and lounging on the couch, reading books, sometimes making love. He would go running, long jaunts around the property and beyond, wondering in the great expanse of nature. Every day she would come home to him and it was beyond any of his wildest dreams. The calm. The simplicity of it all. This was happiness. It was the fucking textbook definition.

He was all right for a while. He really was. If he felt the twitch of _It_ , he shook it off. It was fine stored in the back of his mind. _It_ existed, but billions of other Earthlings lived just fine without knowing _It_ or fighting _It_. Why couldn’t this be him?

This was his life now. He had to make it so.

-

_Scully this is who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. This is who I was before I met you. It’s what I do. It’s everything I know._

She's evolved to hate his darkness. Or maybe she always did. Maybe she hates that she was tasked to keep him out of it, his last tether to the real world. Maybe she hates that it dragged her in kicking and screaming and weeping. He hates that.

Ever since he nearly lost his life to Dacyshyn in his grisly medical compound and she saved him, again, he had stuffed that dark part of him deep inside. He had given up his endless quest for answers to the questions that kept him up at night. It was a part of him, yes. But a part of him best kept private. Their life now made him more complete than he'd ever been. 

But it was at the expense of what he believed was his true mission in this world.

He remembers when the darkness began to creep out of him, little by little. The doubt, the nagging questions rising in his mind about his worth and his value. It was unusual for him, inexplicable. He'd rarely had a problem with ego in the past. This thing chipped away from the inside. It started working on his heart, then worked up to his brain. And he began to believe what it said.

He knows that's when it began in earnest. 

He could feel it happening and identify what was going on. It doesn’t take an Oxford-trained psychologist to recognize the symptoms of depression. They are simply defined, yet hard to acknowledge. Nobody wants to be that guy. Step one, diagnosis.

Labeling it, step two, was both both frustrating and soothing. Frustrating—it shouldn’t be happening. Soothing—to know what is happening and to appear in control of it.

And as it progressed, he knew what was happening. It could have been worse and he was sure it was fine. It got to the point that Scully noticed something was amiss. She began asking him how he was feeling, treating him with her tender bedside manner the times he came to bed, which became less frequent as the intensity of the war over his mind grew.

He should have taken the third step she kept asking him to take—get help. But help was a terrifying prospect, largely because help might mean this part of him would be taken away, hidden away.

He wasn’t sure he wanted that again.

He was tired, so tired. He could feel it in his face and body but his head was stuck in drive. Sometimes he would try to sleep and would lie awake thinking about everything. Mom, Samantha, the abduction. Scully's abduction. His abduction. So many puzzles he couldn't solve.

These puzzles he could obsess over and they’d keep his mind off the fact that his mind was slipping and his body was aging. There could be an answer he’d stumble upon that would bring him back around.

He wasn't looking for the Ruskin Dam information when he found it buried deep in one of the dramatically named "conspiracy" blogs he blew through daily like The Washington Post. The word conspiracy has terrible denotations, adjectives and images that better described mental illness than the valor and heroism the writers were convinced they were displaying by shouting into the depths of the Internet to anyone who might hear.

He used to be them. Inquisitive, obsessive, and driven. It was wrapped up around his identity like a dormant boa constrictor. And then, with the new theory about the dam, with the mention of Dr. Parenti, it awakened.

It would either relent or squeeze him to death and the only thing he could do was fight.

-

Wyoming, looking mournfully desolate on a day that, any other day, would have been pricelessly beautiful. He drives them back to the Comfort Inn. He brushes invisible dust off the dash as he drops her off at the lobby door.

Inside, he sits on the end of the bed and watches her pour herself a long draw of room-temperature bourbon and take a healthy swig. She doesn’t look at him, nor does he expect her to. 

Instead, he switches on the television, ignoring his paranoia about the cleanliness of hotel room remotes, and flips through all the channels. She paces around the room and in front of him, occasionally stopping at the window to move aside the curtains and look.

_Nobody’s coming_ , he thinks, but he doesn’t dare say it.

He finds The Learning Channel and whatever’s on there is only noise to fill the blank space in the room. Scully settles at the wobbly table, still nursing her drink. She pulls her phone out—he watches out of the corner of his eye as he settles back on the scratchy comforter and pillows. He crosses his legs and he waits. He loses himself in the mass media drivel spilling forth from the T.V. like an avalanche of distraction. Delusion.

And _he_ is what is wrong with the world.

Hours pass and she’s still focused on her phone, her back to him. He keeps dozing off. Once he opened his eyes to see her retrieving her phone charger. Sometimes she stops and leans her head back, breathing deeply. Then she hunches over the screen again, rapt with attention. This is how she looks for answers.

He turns on his side and says the only thing that crosses his mind. “Come over here.”

She straightens her shoulders, her head cocked to the side. He turns off the television and silence fills the room. His chest aches with so many things—regret, pain, unspent tears. 

“Dana.”

A heavy sigh escapes her as she stands and faces him with her red-rimmed eyes and pursed lips, but she comes to him. His heart doesn’t know what to make of her concession.

She slides onto the bed and rolls into him in one smooth movement, her head tucking under his chin. He covers her, his protective embrace, strong arm around her back and his leg hitched over her hip. 

Slowly, her weeping increases against his chest, his shirt bunched up in her fist. 

He closes his eyes and loses at least nine minutes.

-

“I don’t know if I can be in this any more.”

He opens his eyes and the room is darkened. Early evening. He must have fallen asleep while she remained cocooned within him.

“In ‘this’?” he asks. “What is ‘this’?”

“All of this, Mulder.”

He hums in recognizance, moving his lips to the top of her beautiful head. He breathes her in, her familiar shampoo, her familiar perfume. He tries to take on some of her pain, somehow. He tries to pull it away. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.” She takes a deep shaky breath. “I have nothing left to put on the line for you. I'm gone. I'm spent. I can't fix you, especially when I need fixed so badly myself.”

“I know.” He remembers lying in a motel bed in Oregon, telling her not to waste herself on him or his pursuits. _There's so much more than this._ While he held her, shivering, their baby a spark of life in the soft swell of her stomach.

He holds her now, shivering, their loss settled forever deep in their bodies.

Her breathing evens out and becomes a light snore. This time he stays awake to let himself cry into her hair.

-  
His cell phone rings and he awakens, seeing that she’s worked herself out of his embrace and is sprawled across the comforter. He grabs the phone from the nightstand and knowing who it is, doesn’t check the caller ID. He answers with a quiet hello, waits through the awkward silence on the other end, and then listens to Beth explain that the sin he’d committed cannot be redeemed.

William wants to stay, she says.

And what do you say to that? When your real self, your darkest self, is so apparent that your own son knows he can’t be a part of your life. “Tell him we love him.”

He ends the call, tossing the phone to the floor.

Scully stirs on the bed. “You didn’t fix it.”

He stares at the ceiling. “I didn’t try.”

-

The next morning he runs in the cool Wyoming mist that obscures the flames of a prairie sunrise. It has been months since he’s hit the pavement, or in this case, the dirt, and he pushes himself until his legs burn like fire and he dry heaves on the side of the road, bent over as the jolts in his stomach subside.

Then he runs again.

-

Mulder had bought three tickets home just in case. She watches him tear the spare ticket with their son’s name on it into pieces and drop it in the hotel room trash can. 

The empty seat in the row of three doesn’t feel empty at all. Something is there, something that she knows will travel with them for a long time.

-

They pull up to the property and he gets out to open the gate. It is the first moment she has had to breathe since the day before but she can't.

The driveway is muddy leading to their house, having weathered the rain of the past few days. She repeats the word in her head—home—and it fails to stick.

She gets out of the car and leans against it with her arms crossed, listening to the monotone of crickets in the trees.

“Thank you for trying,” she says as he's tugging the luggage out of the trunk. “And for taking me to see him.”

She brushes a tear away and presses her hand against her face. Her head feels heavy.

He sets the luggage down at her feet and cups her other cheek. “I wanted to bring him home for you. For us.”

She looks into his eyes and forces a half smile. “I know.”

A sick feeling settles in the pit of her stomach—a heartache rooted so deep inside her body that it has no center and no end.

He goes inside. She looks up at the tree-lined sky, then takes out her phone and looks at the plan she’s been working on for two days now.

Her finger hesitates over the first apartment listing.

-


End file.
